Sweat, Dance, Grief

I finally did it! I finally figured out a way to make “exercise” fun for myself. I just dance. This started as a grief practice, and continues to be so, but it’s morphed into a daily routine of movement, sometimes gentle weight lifting, stretching, strengthening, crying, flow, sweat, trance state, and fun. It’s a long story about how I got here but the important thing is I’m here, finally. I didn’t realize how much grief was stagnating my spirit, how much it was blocking the flow of energy and joy from my life. I didn’t realize because culturally we don’t talk about grief, and especially at the time my father died in 2000 I probably didn’t even know what that word meant. I meant, I had heard of grief, sure, but to really understand what grief is means I needed to allow a full range of emotion to come up and through me, something I wasn’t capable of doing for a long time. I will be writing more about this in the future but right now I just want to focus on the dancing part.

I’m a total body nerd, and maybe you are too, so this might be as interesting to read as it is to share. My whole life I have barely sweat. I’ve always wondered why but just chalked it up to physiology. As I began this body flow practice—unbridled movement, patient stillness, wailing, keening, crying, raging, stomping, kicking, screaming, laughing—I began to sweat. When my voice really got involved in my movement, in my pain, I began sweating. I’m not ashamed to admit it didn’t smell great, either. That changed quickly (back to smelling like maple syrup!), but initially it was puzzling. My interpretation is this old, old grief was clogging up my pores, restraining my heart, and deadening my capacity to grow and feel.

It’s only been a couple of months since this dance practice took root in my life in a major way but I feel so completely different. This isn’t a complete story by any means, but I sit in awe of the adventures in the body. I have so much more to say about this, but for now, I want to share some of my playlists, modeled after Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0uB70po3yJVKctV3yJrOct?si=10bf9250c34847f7

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60oS4xGT0nXPfcHa7Y3VMk?si=c81ab84c63404a0c

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4rcJOOax5nFTkrx1TMuLQ2?si=cfcae5b1c7ac470c

Happy sweating!